Vancouver Winter Olympics all ready except for one key ingredient: the white stuff

Canada's Winter Olympics are ready to start after massive preparations, except
for a desperate struggle to get hold of enough snow.

Officials have hired 300 tipper lorries to ferry snow from colder climes and deposit their loads on the forested slopesPhoto: AFP/GETTY

By Philip Sherwell in Vancouver

7:30PM GMT 06 Feb 2010

They have spent six years fretting about security, costs, protests and etiquette. But just five days before the opening of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, organisers are tackling a last-minute act of sabotage by the weather - a paucity of the white stuff.

The warmest January in history has left the slopes of Cypress Mountain, where the world's best snowboarders and mogul skiers will soon be going for gold, virtually free of snow.

Even snow-making machines would have been of no use as they require freezing temperatures to churn out their artificial product. So officials last week hired 300 tipper lorries to ferry snow from colder climes and deposit their loads on the forested slopes - layered over platforms of wood and hay bales to create the necessary humps and bumps.

When the Vancouver Olympic Committee boasted that these would be the "green Games", they had been thinking of the much-vaunted sustainable environmental credentials rather than mountainsides.

To their evident relief, there is no shortage of white stuff at the Whistler resort, where the competitors in the premier downhill events will include this year's most exotic entrant. Born in Glasgow but raised in his native Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong learned to ski on a man-made slope in Milton Keynes and has been nicknamed the "snow leopard" after the pattern on his ski-suit.

Related Articles

In the city, huge screens have been erected in downtown parks for outdoor viewing parties, giant neon Olympic rings adorn the waterfront, search lights illuminate the night sky and buildings have been shrink-wrapped in towering images of star athletes.

But despite the party preparations, Vancouverites are deeply split about whether hosting the Games is an honour or just a hassle. Many middle-class residents are fleeing town, unwilling to brace the traffic and security headaches and embittered about the spiralling costs at a time of economic hardship.

By some estimates, the budget has soared from $600 million when the bid was won in 2003 to $6 billion now, although that total includes impressive permanent additions to the region's trains and roads.

"I'm just not sure it's worth all the trouble and money," said Alan Davidson, 51, an architect, as he prepared to board a flight to Hawaii. "I decided to have some time in the sun instead."

Others dismiss such negative thinking. "I'm really excited that the world is coming to Vancouver for a big party," said Drew Ferguson, 27, a waiter in an oyster restaurant. "My friends and I can't wait."

From boutique hotels to breweries, the city's hospitality industry is looking forward to a bumper month after some difficult economic times.

"We're fully booked each day, but on a personal level, I'm just really excited and I think the buzz around town is great," said Nicholas Gandossi , a life-long Vancouverite and general manager of the chic Opus hotel in Yaletown, a district of gleaming glass and steel condominiums and converted warehouses whose bars and restaurants will be a focus for Games-goers. "There will always be sceptics, but the Olympics must be good news for Vancouver."

If the organisers are ready for their big day, so are the protestors of the Olympic Resistance Network. Their objections range from anti-globalisation and anti-capitalism tirades about the role of large corporate sponsors such as Coca-Cola and Samsung to the alleged waste of money on a sporting extravaganza when central Vancouver is blighted by pockets of desperate poverty.

When the Games kicks off, Vancouver will proudly showcase its picture-postcard setting - a stunning city skyline surrounded by water and mountains - and a culture and cuisine that have long earned it the tag of "one of the most liveable cities on earth".

But just a few streets away from major Olympic venues, in the Downtown Eastside district, the squalid scenes are almost unimaginable for an affluent First World city. Addicts openly shoot up drugs in alleyways, the homeless bed down in bunks in a church converted into a temporary shelter, strung-out street prostitutes mumble incoherently and men in ragged clothing sell detritus recovered from skips and rubbish bins.

"The Olympics have done nothing for me except get ma few extra tickets for loitering and a lot of grief from the extra cops on the streets," said Bryan Simmons, 39, who has been sleeping rough for four years.

"After Vancouver got the Olympics, they said they'd deal with the homeless problem. Well, we're still here and we feel let down and betrayed."

The area is also home to Insite, the only legalised drug injection zone in North America. "The Olympics have been a great missed opportunity for the people of this area," said Russ Maynard, the supervisor. "So much more could have been done to improve this neighbourhood. I think for the Downtown Eastside, the Olympics will be a non-event. And that's a shame."

Cheerleaders for the Games point to investment in low-income housing and homeless shelters, but critics argue that is just window dressing. To make their point, activists will this week stage a "Poverty Olympics", with a cockroach, a bedbug and a rat as mascots, as part of what they claim will be the biggest anti-Games protests in history.

At the First United Church, minister Ric Matthews now holds services in an adjoining gymnasium after the pulpit and pews were removed from the sanctuary to make way for bunk-beds for 250 homeless. He shares the regret that the Games were not accompanied by more work to upgrade the district. "The Olympics are a celebration of bringing the world together," he said last week. "But right here in Vancouver, we have two worlds in one city."